The 5th episode of the TM1 Nybbles series went up an hour ago. TM1 Nybbles is the short form series; a maximum of 16 minutes of actual content plus intros, recaps and outros. (OK, one of them ran over by 33 seconds, but it'll average out.)

You can spot them by the fetching shade of green on their thumbnails.

This week's one, the second part of a 3 part series on general Windows hints and tips, includes segments on how to find your mouse cursor when it vanishes, why your keyboard may unexpectedly change and how to fix it, why windows may snap to the edge of your screen, how to find hidden subset editor windows, and how to kill the accursed and stupid warning dialog that Excel's extension hardening gives you when opening .xdi and similar files. And I give one of my viewers heart failure though adding a value to the registry.

Last week's one dealt with hidden file extensions and hidden directories, amongst other things.

The first three part sub-series, whose playlist can be found here, dealt with Windows Environment Variables, including the Path environment variable and how TM1 admins can leverage it when running scripts, as well as the AppData folders and how that can screw up your computer if you don't keep an eye on them.

You aren't going to reconsider having a separate channel for the TM1 content verusus your gaming reviews?

Ever see Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves where Little John says to Robin "You've stirred up a bloody hornet's nest now!"

Same principle.

That's not an original thought. Indeed in the first episode of Motorsport Manager I made the point that "Any social media expert will tell you that mixing content like this is the absolute wrong thing to do. But I'm gonna do it anyway." And there is a multitude of reasons for that.

(And I feel constrained to point out that Motorsport Manager is not so much a review as an eccentric, slightly off kilter soap opera that travels at about 200mph and has an absurdly heavy accent on data analytics.)

The first one is that if I was making actual TM1 videos more regularly - or indeed at all outside of cameo appearances it could be argued - then the cross-over aspect would be more obvious. Both Motorsport and Farm Manager provide actual data management issues which require real life style solutions. Some of those solutions can obviously be done through TM1 and to my mind can be done rather more interestingly and entertainingly than using a 20 year old model involving cars from Argentina, or using fish sticks with astonishingly static price points.

So why are there not TM1 videos showing this yet? One word. One {bleeping} {bleep} de {bleep} {bleep} {bleeeeeeep} word. And that word is Docker. Oh yeah, no problem, just set up {bleep} {bleep} {bleeeeeeep}ing hardware virtualisation so that you can run a {bleeeep} {bleep} {BLEEEEEEEEEEP}ing son of a {bleeeeeep} Linux environment WITHIN YOUR CORPORATE WINDOWS BASED INFRASTRUCTURE so that you can run Docker JUST TO BE ABLE TO USE A {bleeeeeeeeep} SUBSET EDITOR REPLACEMENT! Or, go through the pain of upgrading perfectly adequate server software to another version just so that you can run Docker kinda sorta natively within Windows, meaning that instead of a straightforward Windows service you have a whole lot of stuff happening inside some black box that you have no real visibility over making troubleshooting an order of magnitude more complex, and here, go spend the time to train yourself up in non-Windows technology because after all, isn't that why your employer is paying you?

Alternative hierarchies are too important a subject to gloss over. But I can't do alternative hierarchies until I can get Docker running, which I have not thus far had the time to do especially as the capex cost to upgrade my server to WS 2016 is in the budget for NEXT year and I have no {bleeeeeping} inclination to set up {bleeep} {bleeep} {bleeeeep}ing Linux virtualisation on WS 2008R2, and I will not have the inclination to do that if I live to be 19 billion and change. As impossible as it seems to be for IBM to understand, I live to USE technology, not to study up on alternative technologies for the sake of doing so. That kind of thing was fun when you were 16. But now you have workloads and deadlines and you just want something that works as cleanly and uncomplicatedly as possible to get the job that you are paid for done.

So for THAT reason instead of TM1 videos coming out a couple of times per week, there are TM1 Nybbles on Windows coming out only once per week at the moment. What I am looking into - though it is hard to find either the time or energy when budget season has just started and I have no offsider this year, meaning that my timesheet last week showed 59.2 hours worked - is to shortcut the capex and see whether I can get an AWS WS2016 server running but even then I would have to integrate it with our network. And see also, "would lack the inclination if I lived for... etc".

OK, so... that's the first thing. The channel should be more holistic than it is. On which subject...

I don't know whether you have ever paused the opening credits for TM1 Nybbles but yes, there are actual, real episodes for every one of those subjects either scripted or part way through production. Except for Italian grammar. I was kidding about that one. I think. Maybe. I haven't really decided yet. But every other subject has at least SOMETHING part way through the production cycle. So that raises the question... where do I draw the line. Should I then split off MS Analysis Services into a separate channel? Should I split off VBA programming into a separate channel? Should I split off anything related to Photoshop? Except... SQL Server can feed TM1. MSAS has similarities and differences to TM1. TM1 reports can be run into Powerpoint. Motorsport Manager data can be analysed in Excel. Or in TM1. Or in MSAS. It therefore doesn't strike me as being an exceptionally productive path to be running multiple channels on areas that overlap. Aside from which "traditional" free to air channels handle a variety of content. If you tune into the ABC at one time you're going to get 4 Corners, if you do it on another night you'll get Mr Bean. Neither program is to everyone's taste but there is no gun being held to someone's head to watch each series, but that said it does explain why I'm becoming a bit more assiduous about the use of Playlists.

The next issue is YouTube itself and its accursed search algorithm. I hang out with a group of other video makers and we discuss how YouTube works and/or doesn't. The short version is that YouTube loves new content and lots of it. It cares less whether the content is congruent, or whether it is diverse. Give it that and it may condescend to place your channel in search results somewhere above the 143rd page. Otherwise it gives prominence to channels which already have lots and lots of subscribers and views (in part because some of these people are making a living out of it, I kid you not, and it's all they do) and smaller channels such as yours truly's are passed the occasional crumb. This cycles both up for the larger channels, and down for the smaller ones.

And thus your average undiscriminating YouTube viewer gets PewDiePie served up to them on their YouTube home page.

And bear in mind that I have a black mark against my name in YT's books for letting the channel lie fallow for 5 years. That was one of the reasons for the marathon of Farm Manager tutorials last weekend. It's a technique called "brute forcing" and if done correctly, not constantly but occasionally, it can get the search algorithm's attention.

So, I can split my content and have two videos going out per week on one and one, eventually at least two, going out per week on the other and nobody will ever see them because YouTube will never show them in people's search results. Orrrrr... I can have 4 or 5 videos hitting one channel. And eventually, inch by inch, that will build up my "search authority" as it is known. If anyone expects to walk into YouTube and become an overnight sensation then their ego exceeds reality. A lot of channels will get significant viewerships a lot faster than mine, but those are people putting out videos once per day or more, something that I don't have the time or inclination to.

Isn't that going to hack off some people who only subscribed for TM1 or alternatively only subscribed for Motorsport Manager? Maybe. But if you try to please everyone all the time, you end up pleasing nobody any of the time. You do nothing, because doing something is always going to annoy someone. It's a lesson that politicians have failed to grasp for the last 10 years at least. The audience I'm after is one which is smart enough to pick and choose what they want to watch, and leave the rest to the side.

The third and final part of the current TM1 Nybbles sub-series on Windows Hints and Tips wraps up with an episode on useful tools. Of course, chances are that none of these will be unfamiliar to many if not most experienced TM1 users; Notepad++, 7Zip and WinMerge, including the TM1 language definition for Notepad++ which can be found on this very forum.

A piece of software whose videos attract ratings 30 to 40 times better than videos on TM1 do.

In practice?

A clickfest where the numbers are so randomised that they make any sort of meaningful analysis / strategic planning pointless, which is why I stopped covering it. It didn't help that the thing was pulled from Steam for about a month 2 weeks after launch because of a contract dispute with another producer.